George Will offers an argument in support of “principled nonvoting.” Two slices:
This is not a normal time. Granted, scores of millions of Americans normally — and reasonably — think their political options should be much better: The memory of man runneth not to a time when voters exclaimed, “What a divine presidential choice we have this year!” Still, 2024 is so abnormal, consider, without necessarily embracing, an argument in defense of principled nonvoting. Plainly put, the argument is: Elections register opinions. Abstaining from voting can express a public-spirited and potentially consequential opinion.
Regarding the supposed duty to vote, the right and ability to ignore politics is an attribute of a good society. (Totalitarian societies forbid notparticipating in the enveloping politics.) As for the supposed duty to become satisfactorily informed:
Polls showed that in 1964, two years after the Cuban missile crisis, only 38 percent of Americans knew that the Soviet Union was not a NATO member. In 2006, only 42 percent could name the government’s three branches. The average American works harder at being informed when choosing a refrigerator than when picking a president.
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It might be a constructive signal to both parties if, for the first time in a century, more than half the electorate would not vote. (Only 48.9 percent voted in 1924.) Voters’ eloquent abstention would say that they will return to the political marketplace when offered something better than a choice between two Edsels.
Joshua Windham calls for an end to the egregious “open-fields” doctrine.
Kimberlee Josephson is right that Mises was right and Elizabeth Warren is wrong. A slice:
Time will test the best of what Apple has to offer. And so far, the benefits derived from Apple products have extended far beyond the smartphone sector. It is perhaps worth noting that Warren Buffett believed the iPhone to be “enormously underpriced” and he said he’d give up his private airplane before he would the iPhone. “What it [iPhone] does for you, it’s incredible” and, if to add to Buffett’s sentiments, what Apple’s success has done for other sectors is also incredible.
In addition to empowering small businesses who have leveraged Apple products for transactions in a variety of ways, Apple has also supported the creation of adjacent innovations which can have spillover use effects in the marketplace. For instance, in 2021, Apple’s Advanced Manufacturing fund awarded $45 million to Corning Incorporated to further research and development for creating the toughest smartphone glass ever made, Ceramic Shield. The various forms of protection and connection that Apple has established for its hardware, its software, and its content is truly impressive and should be a point of pride for the United States.
Economic advancement occurs when companies increase their capacity for market linkages thanks to business growth. When production and sales increase, a larger and more diversified market occurs igniting new demands for market offerings and new opportunities for job seekers and entrepreneurs. Indeed, businesses depend on vast networks of suppliers, distributors, and ancillary service providers. Businesses never operate in silos and firms survive and thrive when value is derived through market interactions. As it turns out, Apple’s walled garden has produced rather strong vines.
“Trump promised to ‘drain the swamp.’ He did the opposite.”
Jacob Sullum rightly decries Ron DeSantis’s unprincipled cultural warriorism.
George Leef asks: “Why must social workers believe in leftist shibboleths?” A slice:
A veteran professor of social work has just written an article that dares to criticize her field’s obsession with “social justice.” Naomi Farber is an associate professor in the University of South Carolina College of Social Work, and her piece “The Dystopian World of Social Work Education” gives us an insider’s view of the way leftist theories are shoving aside practical instruction.
Farber writes, “The calls to ‘decenter whiteness’ and ‘decolonize curricula’ are ubiquitous among schools of social work, including those at the most prestigious and hence most influential universities.” She continues, “The changes that have occurred already threaten the value of a once-respectable profession as successive cohorts of social workers enter the field prepared to act more as social justice warriors than trustworthy providers of important services to vulnerable people.”
